Meeting CEO of MemeChat, Kyle Fernandes: Mogul of Meme World

In the present times, it is quite an understatement to put forth that, ‘Memes’ have taken over all the social media platforms and have spread like wildfire because, it would be a massive injustice to the scale and the intensity at which memes have absolutely dominated the internet.

 

The situation is such that top-notch educational institutes like UC Berkeley announced a department called Meme Studies in 2017. One of the Professors of the department had reportedly told the media back then that, “Memes are the future,”.

 

Needless to say, it is true that memes have made their mark in advertising. A bolt from the blue, the world was taken aback when the major Italian luxury fashion house, Gucci, began its #TWFGucci campaign that attempted to advertise through effective usage of memes. Following the footsteps of the globally acclaimed brand, many other organizations have since then employed the technique of memes, in an attempt to gain more engagement.

 

Amongst this calculated ruckus, a homegrown social media application that allows users to make memes, share them, and monetize through memes is becoming increasingly popular. The app, called MemeChat, was launched in 2019 and has recently become the only Indian startup to be included in the ‘500 Startups’.

 

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Analytics Steps brings forward an exclusive interview with Kyle Fernandes, the CEO and Co-founder of MemeChat in order to understand more about the company and its concept and to simultaneously dig deeper into the world of memes, further understand the underlying psychology, the business of meme marketing along with their effects and impacts.

 

 

Memes & MemeChat

 

MemeChat has over 3.5 million downloads, more than 750k+ monthly active users and about 12 million memes on the platform making it one of its own kind of homegrown applications. 

 

When asked about the platform’s success, Kyle says that “The accessibility and the ease of sending memes for a normal consumer is the foremost criteria for us. Secondly, we focus on Content. We ensure that content is flooded on our platform and that daily content is generated on various topics, so that everyone can find something that they can relate to. We have a strong creator economy, we have created tools to make the experience much more interesting and easier for users to create memes, because we understand that not everybody is a creator however, those who have that creativity, we should give them the right tools to make it happen,”.  

 

A few months ago, Memechat had launched the AMY, the world’s first-ever Artificial Intelligence meme generator that has the capability of making memes within a matter of minutes.

 

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 “The audience has found it to be very new. As a model, it is not 100% accurate. It is about 50-60% accurate but as soon as the audience gets a hang of it, what verbs to use to create a meme and other such things, then it becomes easier. There is a strong retention for the users that tend to use it often,”. 

 

Kyle illustrates his vision where the platform can itself generate top quality content on its own. He intends to have everybody on the platform and, one way to do so is to have personalized content for everyone which this model can effectively provide soon.  The feature was trending on Twitter however, it is only an invite-only feature. Kyle clarifies that “We have kept the discoverability to the minimum because it is a very expensive proposition. Currently, we do not charge anything for using it but being a heavy ML model, it is very heavy on the server as well. We are training the model more and more to be independent,”.

 

The young CEO puts forth that “I have taken a fair bit of time to understand the social media game and I believe that all social media as a whole is a ‘time pass product’. Essentially, we are all competing to become the best time pass product. After analyzing every app that there is in terms of social networking, both international and Indian apps and we are very much working on something very new and interesting,”.

 

“ Now that we have some very interesting backers, we are really looking forward to get ahead of the curve in terms of growth and watch MemeChat getting stronger, healthier and bigger each day,”.    

 

 

Meme Psychology

 

A particular favorite of the Gen Z and the millennials, Kyle candidly tells Analytics Steps that, “What we have noticed is that, memes have now become a language. People like to continually send memes to each other to communicate, almost like replying through memes. That is the behavioral pattern that we have observed.”

 

It’s all about hitting the right chord of relatability with the people.

 

As an example, he explains that any content centered around the home horrors of the COVID lockdowns that included boredom and stagnancy is most likely to be relatable for a wide mass of people. “So, the broader the topic, the more the people that can relate to it, however, it becomes more and more interesting when one makes smaller niches. When one goes on to make content in a particular niche, the minority feels valued. Psychologically, they will like the content and the platform more,” he says

 

While casually scrolling through any social media platform, be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit or LinkedIn, it is common to find contextual memes. For instance, on LinkedIn, one is more likely to find job or office related memes while on Twitter, one is likely to find political memes. The evolution of memes has troubled many who intended to research on the same and pinning down one genre that absolutely works is a daunting task. 

 

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“Things have changed, initially when memes were a new concept and everyone was a newbie, things were different. It is also about being socially acceptable in the sense that, what kind of content is actually socially acceptable. The more socially acceptable people get, the more weirder and absurd the content would be, sometimes even offensive. So, it totally depends upon what is socially appropriated,”. 

 

Kyle confirms that, “Essentially, that (Social Acceptability) has changed in a massive way. We used to have newbie memes in the beginning which are very mild jokes, now referred to as Normie content, very 2015 in their approach. But, now the content is evolving into something more absurd, weird, wacky and it is going to get weirder and wackier. That is how this dynamic meme environment works.” He also mentions about the short attention span of the new generation and their need to have newer content every time.      

 

 

Investment

 

For any start-up, investment is one of the most tedious, almost a herculean task to perform or undergo. However things have been falling into their place for Meme Chat in this area, as, with the company raising $150,000 from early-stage venture fund 500 Startups as part of its accelerator programme.  

 

MemeChat took part in the 27th batch of the programme becoming the only Indian startup to join the programme. Kyle makes it clear that “We, as a company have been very stealthy. We have first looked at monetization unlike other growth companies who look at monetization as a second priority or something that they do later after being successful or reaching a particular user base. My motivation has always been to create this into a massive product. There is no guarantee for investment. One has to be a unique storyteller, vision maker, someone who can drive momentum to bring in investors”. Kyle believes that he is still learning these skills and has a long way to go.

 

He goes on to say that "We did about 6 hundred, 7 hundred thousand in revenue and that amount of money helps in understanding how budgets are supposed to be allocated. I believe that the way we are spending, it's going to be very effective because we know how to grow with a small amount of money.”

 

“ We grow at about 300,000 new registered users each month and the interesting part is that it’s all organic. We don't spend on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Our organic pages on Facebook and Instagram give us enough growth that the retention numbers are high. So, the engagement methods and retention metrics have to be very right in the beginning because as you scale, the numbers are only going to reduce. We have had that correct and now I believe that we are on the right track. So, Investment has now become easier for us,”.

 

 

MemeChat Company culture

 

It is interestingly comical and intriguing to contemplate over a company that profits from humor. An outsider can only anticipate the number of laughable sequences that might occur each day at the MemeChat office.

 

Irrespective of what the MemeChat core members have studied, the common aspect is that they are all a bunch of talented memers as elucidated by their own supremo. “Our CTO is an amazing Machine Learning(ML) enthusiast. Our Finance person used to be the admin of a big page. Even though we were all memers, we were studying something like Economics or B.B.A. or other such courses,” tells the co-founder who started the app with his school friend, now the Managing Director of the company, Taaran Chanana.

 

Later, he comments that the environment at MemeChat is very “fun and chill”. Describing the office atmosphere as empathetic and friendly, Kyle jokingly mentions that “I am roasted all the time, and if I were not, I would tell them to roast me,”.

 

Currently based in Mumbai, MemeChat is soon to shift its location to Gurugram due to the new hirings.